Quad core vs 8 core

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salabarria

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what would be better a 2.93 quad i7 or two 2.26 quad i7?.....im looking to go graphic designs and also music editing and photo editing which would be future proof and last me a while
 
Get yourself a new single socket i7 system (obviously the faster the better) and stuff it full of RAM.

Get a couple of 1Tb fast SATA hard drives and stick them in RAID 0 - striped mode ...

Probably a 4870 X2 card would be nice if you can afford it.

If your considering getting a dual socket system the mobo, RAM and 2 cpu's will probably cost you at least a kidney and you would want to make sure the software you intend to use would make very good use of the second socket ... otherwise ... get a very good single socket system with all of the addons.

A dream machine ...

Look at the applications you intend to use and see what they say about using multiple cores for a start.

It is your money so do a bit of research on the applications you intend to use it for.

Hope this helps.

Good luck.

 

Siggy19

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Note that, with Hypertransport, the i7 functionally already has 8 cores !

Also, the 920 has scope for overclocking to at least 3.4GHz and higher with decent aftermarket cooling.

Oh, and get 12GB of RAM... using DDR3 it is relatively hard to do 8GB unless you drop down to DDR2 mode. This is my pet peeve about the cheap Gigabyte Motherboard... it has 4 memory slots.

2x3x2GB RAM should cost no more than $220 or so.
 

Dougx1317

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I don't know if dual processor is ever really a good idea. You should wait until the 8 core processors come out.

Does anyone know when the 8 (physical) core processors are going to come out? I've read that Intel will go with 6 cores before 8 cores. Will the 6 or 8 core processors come out with the 32nm processors or will they be after that?

And Siggy19, I think it's hyperthreading not hypertransport.
 

snarfies

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Why? What will you do with 8? Most software doesn't take advantage of 4. The OS will be able to distribute processes across more cores, but I don't think you'll see much speed difference between 4 and 8.
 

Siggy19

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Hyperwhocareswhatitscalled... ;-)

Quad core seems to be the sweet spot to me... single core sucks when your virus checker kicks in. Dual core is better, but can still be hurt by other threads. Quad core seems to be sufficient to ensure that at least one core is devoted to what you are actively running. More than Quad Core can be better still, but I doubt that it scales as well and you start to get into issues of having the overhead of managing all those cores.

But I will doubtless be proved wrong when Skynet Mk I is released and requires a minimum of 64 cores.
 

salabarria

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well i decided to get the i7 2.93 core with 8gb ddr3 and also a 4870x2 i think this would be good for what i want to do.....thanks for the input
 

Siggy19

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WHY the 8GB ??? If you're going with the 4 slot Gigabyte motherboard, you may want to rethink that since it will cut the performance of the RAM to DDR2 mode.

Get a 6 slot motherboard (basically any other one) and either 6GB or 12GB of memory.

DDR3 only works if three (or a multiple thereof) slots are used.
 

loneninja

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DDR2 and DDR3 are different types of memory, not the abbreviation for duel channel or triple channel.
 

mpain55

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Your question doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There is no 2.26 i7 on the market. The lowest i7 speed is the i7 920 which is 2.66. And you say you want two of them in one machine? That doesn't sound right to me, unless your trying to run a server or something? Anyways a core i7 920 2.66 ghz is what you want. The core i7 940 2.93 ghz is a decent waste of money, due to the fact the the 920 can reach well beyond 3ghz with a simple overclock.
 

snarfies

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Do you... actually not know the difference between RAM and CPU cores...?
 

Siggy19

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I do not understand the question.

The 4 memory slot Gigabyte motherboard has ... er... 4 memory slots. Sure the DDR3 memory will work in it, but if you populate all 4 slots, the (more expensive) DDR3 memory will behave like DDR2 memory, while if you only populate 3 slots, it will behave like (faster) DDR3 memory. Or at least, that is my understanding. I may be wrong and please correct me if this is the case. If my understanding is correct, 6GB (3x2GB) may perform as well or better than 8GB (4x2GB) memory. Of course, the simple solution (that will cost maybe $100 more) is to get almost any other i7 motherboard and populate all 6 memory slots to provide 12GB at full triple channel DDR3 performance.

As to how many CPU cores that relates to... it doesn't. The i7 has 4 distinct cores, but by using hyperthreading it can often perform like it has 8 cores. Again, that is my understanding and I may be wrong.
 

mpain55

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If your referring to the Gainestown Xeon chips those are about 800$ for a 2.26 ghz. I highly doubt the op was referring to this. And you would know better than to recommend a dual socket motherboard to someone only looking at photo and music editing. dual sockets are targeted for servers not graphic designers. Even the most geared gaming rigs don't consider a dual socket motherboard, they are useless unless your running some type of server configuration all of which i stated in my last post.
 
Not exactly. The Gainestown E5520 2.26 quad is actually more like $380 or so, not $800 (a pair would be $800, but that's a different matter). I wasn't recommending it necessarily, but it is the way to go for a high end professional level photo video rig. It is more expensive than a single i7 setup though, and would only benefit fairly serious and continuous photo or graphic design type work, and is certainly not the best choice for everyone.

As for the OP, I would say that they certainly seem to be referring to this - there really isn't any other CPU out there that fits "two 2.26 i7". Your statement about gaming is completely separate - games tend not to be CPU bound, and even the games that are CPU bound tend to be bound by a single thread performance, not multithreaded, so a dual socket has almost no gains at all in gaming, while in something completely CPU bound and multithreaded, like some photo editing, graphic design, and video editing software, the gains are there and real from a dual socket. There's a reason the Mac Pro is a dual socket, and it isn't because it is supposed to be a server.
 
I have to say, I enjoy it a lot :)

It works beautifully for simulation and math software that I got it for (I'm an engineering student). It doesn't do half bad in games either :)
 

salabarria

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yea because i need a computer good enough for graphic designs and music and photo becuae thats what im basically studying right now and i need a good enough computer to last me a while i was thinking about the new mac pro.....whats your input on that?
 

UNICOMPLEX

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I wasn`t even aware there was a 4 slot x58 mob as salabarria decided to get, to be honest I dont see the point, why splash out all the $$$ on a i7 940 then ruin it with a cheap option motherboard, may as well complement it and get a 6 slot.
 
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